The archaeological site of Izapa is in the Mexican state of Chiapas, only a few miles from the Mexican border with Guatemala on the Pacific coastal plain. I had the opportunity of visiting this site and the Soconusco Archaeological Museum in Tapachula in early May. The museum displays some of the important artifacts from the site. I was on the Holland America ship Westerdam, which was repositioning from Fort Lauderdale to Seattle, and the ship stopped at Puerto Chiapas. I know better than to expect that a tour from a cruise ship will satisfy a aficionado, in whatever he or she is really interested or knows something about. True to form, the tour gave us limited time to explore this large site, and the guide, although an earnest and intelligent young woman, had very limited knowledge about it and gave the tourists the usual spiel about blood and sacrifice. More seriously, she misidentified the plaza and ball court. In addition, a tour discharges a large number of wandering people on a site, and I really do not like to have my photographs, which I, at least in my former life, show to undergraduates and the public, cluttered with tourists in their touring clothes. Nevertheless, the tour did give me a chance to see the site I have often read about and had not seen before. I have visited most of the Mesoamerican sites of any importance, but the Pacific coast of Chiapas has always been a bit out of the way. The new port facility at Puerto Chiapas will remedy that from now on.
The Izapa tour stopped at Group F, one of six subareas of the site and the one that is located conveniently along the Interamerican Highway, but north of the main site area. It also is the group that the New World Archaeological Foundation in part reconstructed in the 1960s after excavation. However, Izapa was first settled about 3500 years ago, and archaeologists have found evidence of that settlement elsewhere (in Group A). Based primarily on ceramic sequences, Group F dates later, probably between 2000 and 600 years ago. In addition to its proximity to the highway, the better preservation of the later Group F was an important factor in its selection as the part of the site to be reconstructed and shown to tourists. The above photograph shows the Group F plaza with a monument platform (sans monument) in the left foreground, Mound 130 on the left (mostly out of the photograph), and Mound 125 in the background. Mound 125 is a complex consisting of a platform with a pyramid (temple base) at right and a several smaller mounds (one of these can be seen in the center background). All of these probably held buildings, which may have been temples, elite residences, storehouses, or whatever. These mounds of earth are faced with river cobbles, and they probably were covered with plaster and painted. There are several stone sculptures in the roofed enclosure in the center of the photograph.
The above photograph shows an I-shaped ballcourt, with the pyramid of Mound 125 in the background. The sides of the ballcourt are formed by Mound 126 on the right (and mostly out of the photograph) and two-tiered Mound 127 on the left. It is only ballcourt at Izapa and appears to be a relatively late feature. In fact, Group F may have been the last area of the site occupied.
After we had explored Group F, we were put back on the bus, which then headed for Tapachula. The guide passed around the above photograph, which was labeled Mound 30. Mound 30 is in Group A at Izapa, and it is within that mound that the earliest evidence of settlement at the site was found by archaeologists. However, we were not given the chance to visit that mound or the several stone sculptures there (in the photograph they are the things protected by small the grass ramadas). This early settlement and the influence it received from the Olmec and then presumably transmitted to the Maya of the lowlands is the major importance of this site. Interestingly, the photograph of Mound 30 was passed through the bus without explanation and with a number of other photographs of plants, birds, and other things of local note. The tour then headed for a tilapia farm!
Eventually we reached Tapachula. There in the center of the city is the Tapachula Cultural Museum (above photograph), and inside it is the Soconusco Archaeological Museum. The museum houses artifacts, including stone sculpture, from Izapa. At least, the artifacts that were not taken to Mexico City (to the National Museum of Anthropology) or to Tuxtla Gutierrez (Chiapas state museum).
The above photograph shows Olmec figurines, some of which could have been found at Izapa. The Olmec culture, with its distinctive art style, appears to have developed on the east coast of Mexico, and these figurines are evidence of Olmec influence (people, trade, and/or ideas) in the early period of the settlement of Izapa and the Pacific coastal plain.
The above photograph is of Stela 25 from Group A, which is in the Tapachula museum. It shows a human figure (right) standing above a conch shell and opposite an alligator (its head is near the figure's feet) from which a tree grows. The human figure holds a snake and a staff on which sits a large bird. The stela is from volcanic tuff , is broken at the top, and was removed from the site by vandals. Its meaning can only be conjectured. The museum does not have some of the more famous stelae from Izapa: the beautifully carved Stela 5 from Group A, which has a tree of life and seven human figures, and the grisly Stela 21 from Group D, which has a priest carrying a severed human head. I guess I will have to be content to view other people's photographs of those.
You can read bits and pieces about Izapa in just about any textbook or reference book about Mesoamerican archaeology, but the primary references that discuss the excavation and the details about the site are the Papers 25 (1969), 30 (1973), and 31 (1982) of the New World Archaeological Foundation at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. It was an interesting visit, but I guess the best thing about it was that it prompted me to research the site in more detail. Labeling tour photographs, and you should always label all photographs, always does that for me.
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